Adobe InDesign CC includes new features and enhancements to make your design and desktop publishing experiences better than ever. New features include Creative Cloud Libraries, a Welcome screen, improved Adobe Color integration, the Color theme tool, new interactivity for fixed layout EPUB, and EPUB interactivity preview.

Continue reading for a quick introduction to the new features available with the latest update to Adobe InDesign as well as links to resources for additional information.

The February release of Adobe InDesign CC includes new features such as Creative Cloud Libraries and a new Welcome screen.

Adobe InDesign CC 2014.2 Release | February 2015

Collaboration using Creative Cloud Libraries

New in this release of InDesign CC

Creative Cloud Libraries, now available in InDesign, allow you to organize, access and share creative assets, such as colors, type, brushes and graphics. You can add character attributes as text styles. You can also copy your native InDesign library assets your Creative Cloud Libraries.

Note:

You cannot transfer character styles to Creative Cloud Libraries. However, you can transfer character attributes as text styles.

On different computers:

Libraries are automatically synced to Creative Cloud as they are created, so you don't need to worry about saving, or accidentally deleting or overwriting an asset.

Photoshop and Illustrator CC:

Photoshop and Illustrator CC have the Creative Cloud Libraries built in, too. Any Library that you save from InDesign automatically becomes available for use in Photoshop and Illustrator as well. The same way, any Library that you save in Photoshop and Illustrator becomes available in InDesign.

Working offline:

Your libraries are there when you need them; no Internet connection is needed. You can access a local copy on your desktop offline.

Welcome screen

New in this release of InDesign CC

The 2015 release of InDesign CC has a new feature to help you discover, learn, use, and promote comprehensive use of features. The Welcome screen is a single location that displays content relevant to you. The screen is displayed each time you start InDesign, or when you click Help > Welcome. The Welcome screen displays InDesign-related tutorials, videos, Help content, and much more. A tab-based approach helps you find interesting content, be it on new features, getting started launch-boards, or nifty tips and techniques.

Note:

The Welcome screen feature is enabled for all US English and UK English InDesign CC 2014.2 users.

Opening a newer version document

New in this release of InDesign CC

You can now send documents to anyone using older versions of InDesign without extra steps like manually exporting to IDML. Compatibility is built right in, ensuring that your documents always open just as you would expect.

If you open a document created in a newer version of InDesign and click OK in the following message, InDesign uses a Creative Cloud service to convert the document to the InDesign version that you are running. InDesign then saves the converted document back to your computer.

Other important enhancements

Create New table

New in this release of InDesign CC

In previous releases of InDesign, to insert a table in a document, a user first needed to create a text frame and then insert the table within the text frame. This implied that if the current cursor was not inside a text frame the table menu options were disabled and users who were not aware of the workflow, were not able to proceed.

To address this, InDesign now allows you to create a table without first requiring to create a text frame.

Ungroup Remembers Layers

New in this release of InDesign CC

In previous releases of InDesign, when a user selected multiple items from multiple layers and groups them, the group (containing the items) was created in the topmost layer. If the user chose Ungroup, the items did not move back to the layers where they came from - they remained in the topmost layer.

The new Ungroup Remembers Layers feature addresses this pain point. The feature ensures that after ungrouping, all the items of a group are restored back to their original layers (the layers where they came from).

Print Current Page

Now you can print the current page in a document using the Print dialog. In addition,you can use the menus in the Pages panel to print a spread or range of selected pages.

Previously, in the Print dialog, if you did not know the current page, you would first need to dismiss the dialog, determine the page, fire off the print command again, and then enter the correct page number in the appropriate field. Now, you can simply select the option to print the current page from within the Print dialog.

In application - What's New dialog

Enhanced in this release of InDesign CC

On the first installation of InDesign CC 2014, a What's new dialog greets you with content that provides information about the new features in this release. Click a link to learn more about the feature.

InDesign CC 2014 release - June 2014

Video: New features in InDesign CC 2014 release

Rufus Deuchler gives you a walk-through of the new features in InDesign CC.

by Rufus Deuchler

Rufus Deuchler is the Principal Creative Cloud Evangelist at Adobe.

Seamless update

Shortcuts and preferences are retained when you update to the latest version of InDesign, ensuring that you can easily and quickly get to work with the latest version.

The InDesign preferences and presets from an earlier version are retained. You can also manually trigger local migration of presets and preferences from Edit > Migrate Previous Local Settings.

Previous version settings are migrated from Creative Cloud in the following scenarios:

No local settings are available for migration

No current version (10.0) settings are available on Creative Cloud

This ensures that you don’t have to change your settings every time you update InDesign CC. Once settings are migrated, make sure that sync settings is initiated for the current version so that all the latest settings are now stored in the cloud.

EPUB enhancements

In this release, InDesign provides support for Fixed Layout EPUBs. You also get control over adding epub:type markups. The enhancements made in this release also provide improved CSS support for table and cell styles. You can update metadata in the fixed layout and reflowable layouts, in addition to, configuring the exported outputs in the Viewing Apps tab.

Fixed Layout: InDesign now supports this format that is interesting and interactive. This format is used widely for children's eBooks and for complex non-fiction like cookbooks and textbooks. Unlike standard eBooks, fixed layout eBooks retain the same page layout and design, as their print book counterparts. You can export your InDesign document to a fixed layout EPUB format. You can control the way the layout would appear on a digital reader using this feature. Select File > Export > EPUB (Fixed Layout) from Save as type, to explore this format.

EPUB Fixed Layout

Customizable object width and height in CSS: You can now customize the height and width of an object in a CSS file in the Object Export Options dialog box (reflowable layout only).

New EPUB type markup: A new EPUB type helps improve the accessibility of components in EPUB export design. This new epub:type (Object Export Options > EPUB and HTML) helps you define the elements in a publication and design the intended reading order for the reader of the EPUB file.

Writing improved CSS for table and cells styles: Table and cell styles now get mapped appropriately to the CSS. If a table is not used, InDesign creates no unnecessary CSS files.

Metadata: You can update the file info or metadata of your InDesign file and the same EPUB data gets populated in both Reflowable/Fixed Layout tabs.

Viewing Apps (Export): A Viewing Apps tab has been introduced in both Reflowable and Fixed Layout EPUB export options. Viewing Apps displays the applications that you can configure to open or view the EPUB files.

See also:

Improvements to tables

As part of enhancements to tables in InDesign, you now get the ability to simply drag-and-drop table rows and columns from one position to another within the same table. Select the rows you want to copy or duplicate, hover over the selected rows, a unique cursor indicating that the selection can be moved is displayed. The item row can be simply dragged and dropped (or copied with an 'Alt' key pressed).

You can also copy the contents from header and footer rows to body rows (by pressing Alt/Opt key). Likewise, body rows can also be duplicated and converted to header and footer rows.

Color groups

You can now create and manage color groups in InDesign. Simply create Color Groups from the Swatches panel through the new Color Group icon or from the flyout and context menu. You can also share the color groups with another application using Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) files. For example, load color swatches from another project in Illustrator.

Enhanced search - Find Previous

In previous InDesign versions, users could only search in forward direction. It meant that if you skipped over an item too fast and wanted to go back, the only way was to complete the find operation and start over again. This workflow has been improved now.

The Find/Change dialog in InDesign now has two search direction buttons - Forward and Backward. As search forward is enabled by default, you can switch to Backward to reverse the flow of the search. The new functionality helps you search strings in Text, GREP, and Glyph tabs.

Behance integration

Showcase and discover creative work on Behance. As a member, you can create a portfolio of your work and broadcast it widely and efficiently. Or, explore the latest creative work on a global scale by browsing featured or popular work across fields.

You can upload spreads as work-in-progress to Behance directly from within InDesign. Spreads are converted to images and shared on Behance for review and feedback.

At a time, you can upload only one spread from InDesign. To share a complete document, you can share as many times as the number of spreads in the document. Each spread goes as a separate upload and posting on Behance.

Improved packaging

From this release, you get the ability to include a PDF and IDML file in any package created from InDesign for individual documents. An InDesign package now includes INDD, linked files, fonts, IDML, and a PDF (Print).

Enhanced data merge for QR code

Now, you can place a data source containing a QR code in a merged document. The QR code workflow is integrated with the merged document. The following types of QR code can be linked via data merge in InDesign documents:

Plain Text

Web Hyperlink

Text Message

Email

Business Card

Today, if you’re creating business cards for multiple people (in an organization, for example), you can use data merge. If you want to add a QR code, you would have to manually create a QR code for every unique business card. With this new update to data merge, you don't have to create a QR code manually for each card; the QR code can be automatically created during the data merge.

HiDPI support for Windows

InDesign now supports HiDPI for Microsoft Windows across a wide variety of DPI display settings. You can view sharp and clear User Interface elements, visually appealing under various scaling factors. HiDPI support enables the display of text and complex artwork in greater clarity, and in colors and hues that are more vibrant.

Scalable effects

Earlier, transparency effects applied on an object in InDesign did not scale with the object. Now, all effects get applied. Effects such as drop shadows properly scale as you change the scale of an object or text. With the new Scalable Effects feature, an option to scale the transparency effects while scaling an object has been added in the Control panel and Transform panel flyout menus. You can activate scaling using this option.

Modernization - Changes to panels

Tool Hints panel

As part of modernization, the Tool Hints panel has been converted from Flash technology to HTML5. This panel (Windows > Utilities > Tool Hints) displays information about tool name, toolhint, and tool icon of the selected tool. It was earlier APE (Flash) based extension, the panel is now a CEP HTML5 based extension.

Background Tasks panel

The Background Tasks panel (Window > Utilities > Background Tasks) is used to monitor the progress of ongoing background tasks. It also allows the user to cancel an ongoing background task. This panel was earlier APE (Flash) based and has now been converted to run on the drover User Interface technology.

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